Mode switching for missions and Smeaton Orbital [200mill/hour]

Well it looks like all you giant crying babies got your wish.
SMEATON IS DEAD.
Its been nerfed to hell.
Just spent an hour going around to all of the stations,outposts, settlements etc and even board hopped to see it i could get any proper economy passengers to smeaton. And the highest paying one i could find was 465,000 cr. I'm not doing a 40 min run for the same i can make for doing a 1 hop 200ls run.
You bunch of crying babies won. Smeaton is dead, nerfed to the stone age.
Hope your all happy

We weep together brother... :(
 
It is not consequences free arcade button trasher neither. You are trying to mold it into something it wasn't designed for. Having rebuy screen is the point of all this. It is there to play smarter, play better...not get enough money to make consequences obsolete.

As for passenger money runs...I hope it comes back. Just not 100-200m/hour.

Agreed, 500-1B is much better eh? ;)

Nuh, for an hours work I would be happy with 30M+ each round trip.
 
Just want to voice my disappointment at this reaction. There is a very real problem in Elite, it's the end game ships and their prices. The prices are so high they require very high paying jobs, or a years worth of work to achieve. Once one of those lovely ships is owned, the rebuy can be north of 30 million. Depending on job activity, that can be days, or even weeks to recover.
In the early design stages of this game there was talk of high-tier ships not being affordable by the average player until three or four years into the mythical ten-year plan, that's how expensive they were meant to be. The idea that some players might play this game for its entire lifespan and never see the inside of anything larger than a Python was a serious consideration. But the big ships were envisioned as haulers, not brawlers. Expensive to own and operate, capable of hugely profitable trade runs but difficult to defend against organised piracy from smaller, more agile ships, and where the outcome of a bad encounter might be an expensive repair job and a loss of a fair chunk of the cargo.

None of that happened. Instead the big multi-purpose ships with their multitude of SCB / HRP slots and larger hardpoints became the weapons of choice for PVP, which meant that everyone who wanted to be PVP viable had to get on that train. The subtleties of PVP piracy never materialised, so instead of disabling someone's ship and stealing cargo, the goal became "sending them to the Rebuy Screen." Then Engineers came along and made the divide worse. Instead of "end game" (hate that term) ships, or luxury vessels one might dedicate an entire career to owning, A-rated and Engineered Anacondas and later Corvettes became must-haves for certain play styles, hence the need for millions of credits in outfitting and rebuys.

If you play a certain way, ED encourages -- more or less requires -- you to make as many credits in as short a space of time as possible in order to be competitive. Until that is resolved (and I'm not sure it ever can be now) edge cases like Smeaton are always going to be jumped on, and FD are going to be fighting individual fires on and off until the day the servers go quiet.

Disclaimer: I'm not a PVP player, but I did use Smeaton for a 100 million credit boost so I could get a trade Cutter a couple of weeks ahead of schedule. I did a total of five or six runs including initial reputation build. Admittedly some were not wholly efficient, with a few empty cabins on the early runs. Nonetheless it bored me to tears. If I'd had to grind the full 300 million for the Cutter and outfitting I don't think I could have done it. I've seen posts from people claiming to have made 10 billion credits or more at Smeaton. Assuming they need that as a PVP war chest, and not just because they want to be digital Scrooge McDucks, it's heartbreaking. I can't imagine having to grind an arguable exploit for that amount of time just to feel viable in my chosen career. I've never been happier to be a PVE / exploration player.
 
Well it looks like all you giant crying babies got your wish.
SMEATON IS DEAD.
Its been nerfed to hell.
Just spent an hour going around to all of the stations,outposts, settlements etc and even board hopped to see it i could get any proper economy passengers to smeaton. And the highest paying one i could find was 465,000 cr. I'm not doing a 40 min run for the same i can make for doing a 1 hop 200ls run.
You bunch of crying babies won. Smeaton is dead, nerfed to the stone age.
Hope your all happy

So in stead of FD fixing board hopping they just nerf the hell out of the payout thats crap.

FGS.... it was BROKEN before!........ and you are being presumably dishonest... the devs have said multiple times they will re-implement the distance scaling asap, this is just an interim bodge (which should have been put in place months ago) whilst the devs presumably get beta ready to go.

it was nonsence the payments before, for ECONOMY missions...... the highest paying missions need to be the luxury cabin missions to give the actual luxury ships purpose and not refugees or what ever who are some how all multi millionaires.

so yes right now they may still be broken, but, you either trust the devs that they made an honest mistake which unbalanced the game and are wanting to fix or assume they are liars. I choose the former... and as for the cry babies crap...... I suggest you look in a mirror

As others have said, the big ships in the game were MEANT to take years to get, spanned out over 100s (1000s) of hrs play.... I have a child, house (which is a money pit) a job as well... but so what if it means i cant ever afford everything, cest la vie..... but giving player what was always meant to be long goal stuff in a mere few 100 hrs (actually far less lately) definitely ruins the game for some of us..... you have your own view and that is fine, but less of the personal digs.

for many of us the goal of elite is to try to maximise our earnings as a CMDR trying to get by in a harsh universe - not deliberately be inefficient to stop us being millionaires in 10 mins- but at the same time many of us want the game to be a challenge as well.

Personally i would love to see the game much closer to the earnings at launch, and preferred the launch price of the vulture and FDL... but I accept that there needs to be a compromise, something that some on here have no concept of.
 
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Because there are no other space games on the market that give me the freedom to do the things I like to do in this game.

But, to have that freedom, you need credits. The more credits you have, the more freedom to do as you like.

Tying freedom to credits is a bit lack of imagination.

There are Everspace, AstroKill, other games giving arcade shooter feel for space game.

Credits allow to do more, but really, they aren't everything. It seems people are almost afraid to lose.
 
FGS.... it was BROKEN before!........ and you are being presumably dishonest... the devs have said multiple times they will re-implement the distance scaling asap, this is just an interim bodge (which should have been put in place months ago) whilst the devs presumably get beta ready to go.

it was nonsence the payments before, for ECONOMY missions...... the highest paying missions need to be the luxury cabin missions to give the actual luxury ships purpose and not refugees or what ever who are some how all multi millionaires.

so yes right now they may still be broken, but, you either trust the devs that they made an honest mistake which unbalanced the game and are wanting to fix or assume they are liars. I choose the latter... and as for the cry babies crap...... I suggest you look in a mirror

As others have said, the big ships in the game were MEANT to take years to get, spanned out over 100s of hrs play. I have a child, house (which is a money pit) a job as well... but so what if it means i cant ever afford everything, cest la vie..... but giving player what was always meant to be long goal stuff in a mere few 100 hrs (actually far less lately) definitely ruins the game for some of us..... you have your own view and that is fine, but less of the personal digs.
I dont need to look in the mirror just read this thread from start to finish. The cry babiea have been going at it for weeks. It wasn't the payouts that were the problem it was people complaining about board hopping to achieve this. I was doing the run around all the stations etc to get my passenger's which would take quiet awhile longer. And i never filled up my python like the board hoppers could. The best run i ever had from smeaton run was 71m cr and that was a one off. Most of the time between 30-50m.
 
Wasn’t this the same issue we had i the previous beta that was fix, it was still going on? I know some say that the mode switching is contributing to it but didn’t they suggest that it was functioning as intended?
 
In the early design stages of this game there was talk of high-tier ships not being affordable by the average player until three or four years into the mythical ten-year plan, that's how expensive they were meant to be. The idea that some players might play this game for its entire lifespan and never see the inside of anything larger than a Python was a serious consideration. But the big ships were envisioned as haulers, not brawlers. Expensive to own and operate, capable of hugely profitable trade runs but difficult to defend against organised piracy from smaller, more agile ships, and where the outcome of a bad encounter might be an expensive repair job and a loss of a fair chunk of the cargo.

Ah, that sounds like a rather nice game there could have been there.

Although i can imagine the forums if FD had made it require 3-4 years of play to get the big ships...
 
I dont need to look in the mirror just read this thread from start to finish. The cry babiea have been going at it for weeks. It wasn't the payouts that were the problem it was people complaining about board hopping to achieve this. I was doing the run around all the stations etc to get my passenger's which would take quiet awhile longer. And i never filled up my python like the board hoppers could. The best run i ever had from smeaton run was 71m cr and that was a one off. Most of the time between 30-50m.

I was getting 100 million per hour at Medb, although i did board hop.

But reading your post and that of others, i'm going to have to run some sort of auto-translation software:

cry babies = people who believe that 100 million per hour for zero risk tasks was too much and it would be good if FD could do something about it.
 
Tying freedom to credits is a bit lack of imagination.

There are Everspace, AstroKill, other games giving arcade shooter feel for space game.

Credits allow to do more, but really, they aren't everything. It seems people are almost afraid to lose.

But they don't have an entire literal, 400 billion star system galaxy as a sandbox.

They don't allow a person the ability to stamp their name forever on an aspect of said galaxy.

They don't have the kinds of ships that this game has.

They don't have the same controls this game has.

They don't....you get the picture. Those games are not this game.

As for credits, sure, you can have all the fun you like in the little ships. You can even explore to the ends of that galaxy in a Sidewinder. But I wasn't having fun in those ships. I wanted the big ships of doom. I have a Corvette, and just got finished blowing pirates to smithereens in the Nu Tauri system to the tune of a cool ten million credits. I couldn't do that - and have the fun I was having - in a Sidewinder. I might have that fun in a Fer-de-Lance - as I did way back when a year or two ago - but in a Corvette it's been massive, consistent, fun. I also own an Anaconda, and I'm currently debating whether to flagship my Anaconda and combat fit it + Engineering, or engineer up my Corvette into an even scarier murder machine. I might take my Conda and turn it into an Exploraconda and head out to SagA for the first time. Or take an Asp instead.

There are two things I like about this game, and it's fighting and exploration. Having large number of credits allows me to do both. Without any pressure to stop. That's an aspect of freedom that not having those credits would not allow. Your reasons for telling me that I'm wrong are completely arbitrary.
 
I was doing the run around all the stations etc to get my passenger's which would take quiet awhile longer. And i never filled up my python like the board hoppers could. The best run i ever had from smeaton run was 71m cr and that was a one off. Most of the time between 30-50m.

As was I, for similar payouts, but you have to admit it never made much sense for 18 refugees to be paying me 22M Cr. Where are they getting that kind of money from? It would be cheaper for them to buy their own ship, fly to Smeaton and then sell it.

Now, if Frontier can introduce some Luxury passenger missions with similar-ish payouts (perhaps not quite as high to keep it reasonable) then that would be more realistic. Especially for the more high-paying dodgy passengers. A 40 minute SC flight with some Silent Running requirements at the end (in other words, the possibility of losing) would be interesting.
 
I was getting 100 million per hour at Medb, although i did board hop.

But reading your post and that of others, i'm going to have to run some sort of auto-translation software:

cry babies = people who believe that 100 million per hour for zero risk tasks was too much and it would be good if FD could do something about it.

I wasnt abusing the system like some. I wasn't being super greedy just topping up my bank balance to finally be able to afford a A rated conda and have some rebuys lol. And for your information been playing on and off since the preview so years. the usual happened though people used the board hop and got greedy to make multiple billions and it has ruined it for everyone. I wasn't planning on doing this for ever. I was actually planning to go exploring at the end of the week. Just really annoyed they went the total opposite and killed it rather than cutting it back a bit or limiting how many you can stack. Or fix board hopping
 
I dont need to look in the mirror just read this thread from start to finish. The cry babiea have been going at it for weeks. It wasn't the payouts that were the problem it was people complaining about board hopping to achieve this. I was doing the run around all the stations etc to get my passenger's which would take quiet awhile longer. And i never filled up my python like the board hoppers could. The best run i ever had from smeaton run was 71m cr and that was a one off. Most of the time between 30-50m.

yeah i agree the ideal scenario is fix the board hopping.
until that is done, actually coming up with a sensible average earnings scale is bordering on impossible. What FD are doing now is trying to plug the leaky bucket. the mode swapping exploit IS on the list to fix but apparently it is none trivial and they feel they have bigger fish to fry.

(btw I would say 30-50mil per hr is still on the high side for earnings....... but i accept i am biased as i liked the earnings at launch!..... but that is far more reasonable and if that was the MAX you could earn i doubt many would complain.

example - how are FD going to balance the costs of megaships when we finally get them? will they be done to make the quince billionaire wince ..... in which case i can forget ever even thinking about one of them, or will it be something i can work towards for 6 months.... in which case the quince billionaires will just literally log in the second it goes live and pay to get one (i have no idea how it will work but i imagine running costs will come in to it)
 
As was I, for similar payouts, but you have to admit it never made much sense for 18 refugees to be paying me 22M Cr. Where are they getting that kind of money from? It would be cheaper for them to buy their own ship, fly to Smeaton and then sell it.

Now, if Frontier can introduce some Luxury passenger missions with similar-ish payouts (perhaps not quite as high to keep it reasonable) then that would be more realistic. Especially for the more high-paying dodgy passengers. A 40 minute SC flight with some Silent Running requirements at the end (in other words, the possibility of losing) would be interesting.

You should ask the so called refugees/boat people that come to Australia. It has been found that they were getting charged between 40k to 80k to do the trip sneeking into Australia. Where did those refugees get that type of money. I couldn't.
 
You should ask the so called refugees/boat people that come to Australia. It has been found that they were getting charged between 40k to 80k to do the trip sneeking into Australia. Where did those refugees get that type of money. I couldn't.

As has been pointed out elsewhere, this is a temporary quick-fix. They'll reintroduce them with more sensible payouts later, but they've got bigger fish to fry with Beyond just now.
 
There are two things I like about this game, and it's fighting and exploration. Having large number of credits allows me to do both. Without any pressure to stop. That's an aspect of freedom that not having those credits would not allow. Your reasons for telling me that I'm wrong are completely arbitrary.

there are multiple things i like about this game... but the best one WAS scrabbling around TRYING to earn as much money as i can and enjoying the challenge of saving up for new ships and upgrades for ships....... this is no longer possible. I either play with 1 arm tied behind my back (therefore cant enjoy trying to earn as much money as i can) OR i lose any enjoyment in saving up for stuff as i can just earn it super fast.

you are NOT playing it wrong.. but neither was I... but my way of playing is dead and it keeps getting deader!.

its not about right or wrong, it is about us putting our views forward and FD deciding what they want their game to be. Right now it isnt even close to what was in the dev diaires (very short term gold rushes we would guard secretively before they ran dry over short periods of time)
 
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